Leader’s Message – Lessons Learned? – May 2016

On my walk from Union Station in Washington, DC to my lodgings, before participating in Democracy Spring last month, I noticed a memorial and stopped to read what was carved there in stone.

“Here we admit a wrong. Here we affirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law.”

President Ronald W. Reagan, upon signing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988

I had entered a “sacred” space: the Memorial to Japanese-American Patriotism in WWII, designed by Japanese-American artist Nina Akamu and architect Davis Buckley, located at Louisiana Avenue and D Street NW, commemorating Japanese-American soldiers and those held in internment camps. I knew about the camps, as well the annual Day of Remembrance, held on or near February 19, the day in 1942 when President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that required the internment of all Americans of Japanese ancestry. I had also read about the finding, in 1983, of the federal Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians “that there had been no military necessity for the mass imprisonment of Japanese-Americans and that a grave injustice had been done.” But I had neither heard about nor seen this memorial. I walked slowly through it: taking in its stark beauty, hoping that others had also taken the time to stop, and wondering how often the words “Here we admit a wrong” are spoken, never mind carved in stone. Not often enough, I suspect.

Although I admired the cast bronze sculpture, depicting two Japanese cranes caught in barbed wire, atop a pedestal, I was drawn to the words and numbers inscribed in the semi-circular granite wall curved around it. There are the names of the ten camps where over 120,000 Japanese-Americans were placed. There, too, are the names of those who died serving their country. And there is this quotation from Daniel K. Inouye, US Congressman, US Senator, and Captain of 442nd regional combat team: “The lessons learned must remain as a grave reminder of what we must not allow to happen again to any group.”

I carried his words with me when I marched to the steps of the Capitol the next day. A movement is growing. People who have learned those lessons are calling upon politicians to learn them, too. We are demonstrating, and risking arrest, to call attention to the state of our nation: a home to natives and immigrants; diverse in our languages and customs, beliefs and values; and deserving of equal and fair representation. Democracy is both a promise and a responsibility.

As I reluctantly left the memorial, I read this poem written by Akemi Dawn Matsumoto Ehrlich, titled “The Legacy”: